Pages and media in all namespaces that satisfy certain criteria are speedy deletion candidates, which means that they can be deleted immediately and without discussion. The criteria include, among others, test pages, vandalism and hoaxes, nonsense, blatant copyright violations, empty pages or ones lacking sufficient context, articles in defined areas that do not credibly assert the importance of the topic, and pages on topics already covered under another title. Administrators often leave short codes in the deletion summary instead of typing out a full reason, such as "A7" or "CSD A7" for articles that do not assert importance; "G1" for patent nonsense and so on. These codes are explained at Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion.

Articles on living people (BLPs) created after March 18, 2010, that contain no sources in any form (as references, external links, etc.) may be proposed for deletion under this process. Unlike standard proposed deletion (see above), the BLP deletion template may be removed only after the biography contains a reliable source that supports at least one statement made about the person in the article. If the required sourcing is not added within ten days, the article is deleted. Nominated articles will often be labeled as "BLP prod" or "sticky prod" in the deletion summary.

A page or media file may also be nominated for deletion in a deletion discussion, where editors discuss whether it should be deleted. Articles are discussed at Articles for deletion; other pages elsewhere (seedeletion discussion for a complete list). Such discussions normally last seven days, after which an administrator will delete the page if there is a consensus to do so. Anyone may participate in such a discussion, however they are not "votes". The weight of an argument is more important than the number of people making the argument, so encouraging mass participation in such discussion to avoid the deletion of a particular article will not work.

If a particular page has been recreated and deleted multiple times, administrators may decide to protect it against recreation (often called "salting") so that it stays deleted. If you try to edit a protected title, a message box will inform you about it.

If you cannot find a deletion log entry then the most likely explanation is that you did not enter the title exactly as it appeared, or the page was not actually deleted in Wikipedia's sense of the word. For example, pages may be redirected to an existing title, which effectively blanks the former entry, but it is not "deletion" in the true sense. If you can see your edits to the page in your contribution history, or you see another page where the page formerly was, then the page may have been redirected, or the content may have been edited out but still be visible in the page history. If you are unable to determine what happened, try asking at the Wikipedia:Help desk. Always do your best to provide the exact title (or possible titles), and state what username you were logged in under when the page was created, if different from the one you use to ask your question.

If a page or file that you created has been deleted, please don't take offense. See our content policies and the guide to creating your first article to get an idea of what you should be aiming for. Alternatively, remember we already have ৮৯,৫১৬ articles – find a subject that interests you and work on improving our existing content.

Depending on the reason why the page was deleted, there are also several ways you can try to have it undeleted by administrators. In every case, you should first make sure that the page is appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia and, if it is an article, that its content is based on reliable sources. If it is not, your request will likely be unsuccessful.

If you feel a page has been deleted in error, or if you think you have good reasons for wanting to edit a protected title, first contact the administrator responsible via the method explained above. If you are still not satisfied after discussing it with the deleting admin, you may then start a deletion review.

If an article was deleted as a result of a proposed deletion ("prod"), any administrator should normally restore it on your request. In such cases, you can make your request at this noticeboard.

If the page was deleted for any other reason, and you would like to be able to access the text (for example, to resubmit it in a form that meets our content policies), there are some administrators who may provide you with the content of the deleted page on your request. Please do not bother to ask for the text of pages that were copyright violations as it will not be provided.

If anything about these processes remains unclear, you may ask for help at the Wikipedia:Help desk.

A substantial number of new articles by new users are deleted. If you are one of those new users, you may feel confused right now, and need to ask for help at the Wikipedia:Help desk.

If it looks like the page you created is definitely about to be deleted, copy-and-paste the source code to a text file, for example by using a text editor (which preserves your wikitext markup), or a word processor. However, after the page is deleted from Wikipedia, do not immediately put the page back up! Otherwise, it will probably just be deleted again, and the page name may even be protected against re-creation. Either find more evidence to demonstrate the notability of the topic, or wait for more evidence to be published elsewhere in reliable sources. If you intend to recreate the page straight away, consider asking at the Help Desk or Teahouse how you can improve the article the next time around. Please note that not all topics are suitable for inclusion – if no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.

As a result of Wikipedia's rapid growth, by 2007 it had become one of the world's largest and most-visited wikis. Wikipedia articles tend to rank high in the search results for many popular search engines. Prior to Wikipedia, wiki technology was not very well-known;
as a result, Wikipedia may be the first wiki many people see, and the first wiki they attempt to edit on. Some people may be under the mistaken impression that Wikipedia is the only wiki, or is synonymous with "wiki". In many cases, this is unfortunate, because Wikipedia is actually a very specialized kind of wiki (an encyclopedia), and newcomers may need some time to understand what constitutes encyclopedic writing. There is much content that Wikipedia is not appropriate for, but which may be appropriate somewhere else.

There are many other wikis, many with content policies very different from Wikipedia's, catering to a wide range of interests. Some of these wikis were founded by groups of former or continuing Wikipedia editors, who had more to say about their topic of interest than belongs in an encyclopedia. Examples include Wookieepedia (for Star Wars enthusiasts); and StrategyWiki (for video-game walkthroughs).

For almost every sort of article that would be interesting to someone, there is probably a wiki somewhere that would welcome it.

To find a happy home for the deleted article, check the List of wikis, Wikipedia:Alternative outlets, and WikiIndex. If you cannot find a suitable wiki on your own, ask for some "wiki outplacement" assistance at the Wikipedia:Help desk. If the deleted article is in a subject area overseen by a WikiProject, members of that WikiProject may know of alternative wikis to publish subject area content not meeting Wikipedia's requirements. Once you find a home, you can immediately place the article there if you copied and saved the article's wikitext (though it may need modifications to fit into the new website.) If you did not save such a copy, you will have to ask an administrator to retrieve a copy for you.

As mentioned above, please do not take offense. It is common to feel hurt or angry after seeing hours of your work deleted, but please try to work with the complex processes Wikipedians have developed to manage the world's largest collaborative editing project.

Please do not post questions about your deleted article on this page's talk page. Instead, if you have questions, post them on the WIkipedia:Help desk.

Please refrain from resubmitting exactly the same article without making the appropriate changes.